1. Field of the Invention
The present invention relates to a job processing system, in which an information processing apparatus outputs a job and can communicate with a server apparatus.
2. Description of the Related Art
Due to recent advancement of image formation technologies, anybody can easily copy an image and transmit data using an image forming apparatus. The image forming apparatuses can improve the usability of users. However, the image forming apparatuses enable users to easily obtain confidential documents or documents related to personal information. In this respect, it is important to prohibit unauthorized processing and prevent leakage of confidential information.
There is business information (e.g., client information) to be managed as confidential information. Leak of such confidential information must be strictly prevented.
As the image forming apparatuses and communication apparatuses are improving their functions, any leakage of information if occurs in the future is considered to be very huge in its scale compared to conventional cases. Therefore, an administrator of a job processing system is required to carefully manage the information relating to business confidentiality and prevent leakage of the information to a third party or person.
Development in digitization, networking, and mobilization of various kinds of information is increasing the accessibility to a massive information source.
This trend will be more significant if the technologies further improve the portability of information.
As a conventional method for preventing information from being leaked to a third party or person, it is possible to set a right to access a storage server storing confidential information.
However, the recent cases relating to information leak have been rather conducted by the persons who are allowed to access confidential information with their intent to personally obtain the information.
From the foregoing, setting the right to access confidential information is considered to be insufficient to effectively prevent the leakage of information.
The information to be protected is not limited to a huge scale of information represented by client information owned by a large-scale entity. For example, there is information that is valuable in its quality and should be protected, even if the amount of information is small.
This kind of information can be easily taken out, for example, as a print product of a printer or as an output result of a multifunction peripheral (MFP) having Copy, Print, FAX, and Send functions. It is therefore desired to provide any measure capable of preventing information leak of the output jobs. Hereinafter, conventional information leak prevention technologies relating to image forming apparatuses (e.g., printers) are described.
For example, as discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-149371, there is a conventional technique applicable to prevent the leakage of print information from an image forming apparatus.
According to a method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2002-149371, print data is stored in a print server for the use in a reprint operation, and a print log is stored by adding various information (e.g., job name, client name, and user name) and a time stamp to print data or generating a bitmap image from the print data.
According to a method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2003-330677, a printer acquires a print log and stores the acquired print log in the server in addition to the above-described processing.
According to a method discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 2004-118243, a print server receives print data from a client together with information to be used to identify a user, generates a print log based on the print data and user information, and allows the user to perform retrieval, viewing, and reprinting processing.
There is a conventional image forming apparatus configured to prevent information leak of a printer generating paper documents and an MFP generating output jobs and also configured to constitute a system capable of not only printing the products but also storing and managing the output jobs generated by the MFP.
This type of image forming apparatus includes a storage device capable of storing information relating to image data processed by the apparatus, such as the name of a person in charge, date and time, processed information, as an image forming history.
As a system having been introduced considering the situation that the number of cases relating to information leak is increasing, there is a job history management system that can realize an integrated management of outputs generated by a printer and outputs generated by an MFP, to prevent information leak from the MFP or the printer.
The job history management system, if any unauthorized image forming processing is performed, enables an administrator to track the unauthorized conduct by checking time, place, and user information relating to the processing.
Any information, if useful to track the unauthorized conduct, can be positively collected as part of the job history to increase the reliability of history information.
As discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-46265, there is a conventional technique using image information obtained by a network camera as history information usable to enrich the job history.
According to the system discussed in Japanese Patent Application Laid-Open No. 11-46265, the network camera captures an image of a job operator at the timing when a job is generated and photographic data of the job operator is stored in a storage device.
However, if it is required to store photographic data captured by an imaging apparatus, as job history information, when a job is generated by a client personal computer (PC) or an MFP, the following problem arises.
In this case, the job history information is image data, which requires a large storage capacity compared to that for other job information.
Therefore, if the image data (the job history information) is directly stored in a storage device of an image forming apparatus, a storage area of the storage device is mainly occupied by the job history information and cannot be sufficiently used for other functions.